Husband
and wife Stuart and Michelle Elliott exhibit together in a show
not to be missed. Although different in appearance, their work has
many shared motifs and icons, such as fetishes and objects of desire.
The title of their exhibition, Veneers, refers to the deceptive
surfaces of places and people, what we disguise using lipstick,
lies and laminex.

Both
artists are producing sculptural objects and paintings. Michelle
is producing an exciting new range of works, several based on the
indispensable female purse. She gives new lives to these consumer
icons, sometimes reinterpreting as a fetish object and in others
physically reconstructing them to produce something beautiful but
ultimately useless. Also included, by Michelle, will be three dimensional
fabric trilobites and airbrushed panels.

Michelle
has been working on several commissions and public art projects
in recent years, often working with children or communities. She
has been involved in many high profile group exhibitions, such as
the 1997 Perspecta at SH Ervin Gallery Sydney, as well as
curating and co-curating exhibitions. Her work can be found in several
prominent collections such as the Kerry Stokes Collection and Edith
Cowan University.

Stuart
Elliott is exhibiting a combination of paintings and sculptural
installations, creating industrial and suburban icons in his self
described fakeology artworks. His work references heavily
built up urban areas, complete with billboards, with titles like
Eastbrook and Tank houses. Dark, mysterious, brooding, weathered,
industrial gothic, are all words that help describe his work. Also
included will be a series of fleshy, meaty paintings
titled Must haves, based on collages of fashion accessories. There
is certainly a dark sense of humour pervading these works, as there
is in his portrait paintings with titles such as Those who hit things
with sticks, (sporting heroes of course!), Those who face south
and press their sternum and Those who make noise. Stuarts
work addresses world history and our society as well as a healthy
dose of fiction.

He
has written of his new work:Veneers, distant urban descendant
of the Victorian Parlour; that closed, ruthless and affluent place
where, momentarily, science and magic, cruelty and altruism, caprice
and hierarchy, etiquette and perversion coexisted. But even
in January, in Wundowie, under the laminex, in the corroded panels
of long abandoned cars, the acrid smell of that ancient mist can
still catch at the throat, its thrill quicken ones step past
streak-walled derelict house and twitching curtain skein. Or freeze
one, paralysed by overheard grunts and scraping through a motels
splintered, powder blue door.

Well
known local art critic and author David Bromfield is currently writing
a book on Stuart Elliotts work, to be published in 2003. Stuarts
artworks can be found in many important collections: the Art Gallery
of WA, Holmes a Court Collection, Curtin University, Sanyi Museum
Taiwan ROC, University of WA, Murdoch University, Edith Cowan University,
Kerry Stokes and Bankwest.